Clear choices in Lt. Gov. races

Scott Milder is the Editorial Board’s choice in the GOP primary for lieutenant governor. In the Democratic primary, we recommend Mike Collier.

Scott Milder is the Editorial Board’s choice in the GOP primary for lieutenant governor. In the Democratic primary, we recommend Mike Collier.

Photo: /

Photo: /

Image
1of/59

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 59

Scott Milder is the Editorial Board’s choice in the GOP primary for lieutenant governor. In the Democratic primary, we recommend Mike Collier.

Scott Milder is the Editorial Board’s choice in the GOP primary for lieutenant governor. In the Democratic primary, we recommend Mike Collier.

Photo: /

Clear choices in Lt. Gov. races

1 / 59

Back to Gallery

In the GOP primary for lieutenant governor, we recommend businessman and former Rockwall City Councilman Scott Milder. We recommend Mike Collier, certified public accountant and former comptroller candidate, on the Democratic side.

Why not incumbent Dan Patrick?

In Milder, Republicans will get a conservative interested in solving the state’s problems with real solutions. He would lead the Senate with much less partisan rancor and no emphasis on culture wars. He would avoid such items as the bathroom bill, one of Patrick’s signature legislative efforts. It was, Milder knows, a distracting waste of legislative effort.

He pledges to help the Senate solve the state’s perpetual underfunding of public education and says that the $800 million or so Patrick helped go to Department of Public Safety operations at or near the border could have been used for that purpose. He believes in property tax relief and knows that fixing public education funding is the substantive solution. He knows immigration is a federal undertaking, not a state one.

He styles himself a Reagan Republican and laments that such a Republican would have a difficult time in Patrick’s version of the party. He is for getting to work on real problems, not inventing problems to inflame a base.

On the Democratic side, Collier brings financial gravitas to the race — simply, more than opponent Michael Cooper, a retired auto sales manager from Beaumont. Collier was in the audit department of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Collier, too, knows that the path to property tax relief — and the state’s economic future — lies in sufficiently funding public education. Among his interesting ideas: seeking a constitutional amendment to create an Audit, Performance and Integrity Commission to tackle permanent solutions to waste and corruption — independent and politics-free.